Cooking In Hungary With Hungarian Ingredients

Soup - Cakes - Cabbage - Bread - Roasts

Welcome to this cooking side of Living In Hungary - Whether you are a beginner cook, student, bedsitter, person on a food budget and/or someone who
considers cooking certain foods difficult (such as making a soup, baking a sponge cake, baking bread and roasting a chicken), I, John Cairns, will show you how to
prepare ingredients and make meals out of them by giving you clear, easy-to-follow, instructions and explanations.

As I live (off/on) in Hungary and London (UK), with my Hungarian girlfriend Tünde, I have included a few of her Hungarian dishes
together with their Hungarian ingredient names.

Using International And HUNGARIAN INGREDIENTS

Although many of the meals shown on this website use international ingredients (such as rice, pasta, lentils and potatoes), some meals use ingredients more readily
found in Hungarian supermarkets and local Hungarian shops within Hungary. Hence why I have given Hungarian ingredient names and shown packaging where possible/needed,
so you can easily identify them when living in Hungary or shopping in a Hungarian shop within your own country for example.

About The Meals ON THIS WEBSITE

NOTE WELL - The ingredients, meals and cooking methods on this website are NOT about Quick Meals, Food Presentation, The Science Of Cooking
or Healthy/Diet Food but ARE about Preparation, Cooking Method and Taste whereby a meal can easily take between 30 Minutes and 1 Hour to complete on average;
with simmering soups and oven roasts taking up to 2 Hours to complete.

Methods With ATTENTION TO DETAIL

One thing you will notice on this website is that I like attention to detail in terms of how to prepare something, how long something takes to cook, how much
ingredient is needed and the reasons behind some of the cooking methods (in a non-scientific way). These may include photos of what something should look like
before, during and/or after its various preparation and/or cooking stages.

In other words: I like to see clear, step-by-step, easy-to-follow, instructions in a cookbook and on a website; and hopefully you do too. Hence why I have tried
to make sure that whatever you cook from following this cooking website, you hopefully cut out many of the 'beginner mistakes'.

The PHOTOGRAPHS

The photographs on these cooking web pages, showing the various preparation and cooking stages of a meal, were taken by me, John Cairns, to show exactly what the
ingredients and/or its particular meal should look like at a particular point in time - Photos that show the textures and consistencies you should realistically
be aiming to achieve.

The DISCLAIMER

Although I used to work in a large commercial kitchen in London (UK) where I made many chef friends, whose cooking advice has been invaluable over the years, I,
John Cairns, am NOT a chef of any kind. I am just an 'everyday' person who has grown up with a necessity to cook for himself over the decades (in a bedsit and then
in various flats) and now for my Hungarian wife and her family and friends whereby I have acquired the ability to cook edible meals! Hence the confidence to
make these cooking pages.